When a Newcastle resident found an odd sac in their garden, they decided to take the unusual object into The Australian Reptile Park for investigation.

The small white bag looked innocent enough, but what lay beneath was the stuff of nightmares.

Head of spiders at the Central Coast reptile park, Kane Christensen, quickly identified the object as a funnel-web egg.

Funnel webs are extremely aggressive spiders with a venomous bite. Each egg sac usually contains more than 100 spiders.

While this was an unwanted surprise for the resident, the egg sac was good news for the park.

The Australian Reptile Park is the only place in Australia that milks funnel webs for their venom, which is used to make anti-venom.

The park calls on the public to help keep the program running by safely catching funnel web spiders and dropping them at either The Australian Reptile Park or one of the many drop off points around Sydney, the Central Coast and Newcastle.

Once this egg sac was identified Mr Christensen delicately began the process of opening it, and then separated each individual spider.

“We will be growing them to stay in our program here at the park,” a representative said.

Skeptical Kitten excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post here: canberratimes.com.au